What is eternal security of the believer? I mean, I can figure out what it means based on the words, but I don't know the theology behind it.

Well, kind of like what Matt said, but in theory, it has nothing to do with being a jerk on purpose. It just means t FAC mode engaged that people who consider themselves to be saved (accepting Christ as your savior, etc.) can't lose their salvation no matter what they do. Since humans are fallible as shit and will always do sinful stuff, it means salvation doesn't hinge on what you do; once you're saved, you're saved. Your sins are still sins; it doesn't make all your actions automatically "good." It just means that even though you might fuck up, you're still good. Hell is not in the cards.

Really? I was always taught that just because you were Born Again didn't mean you could blow off living a Christlike life. You could be saved but you could throw away that gift.

Some churches do teach that. That's -- I think (I used to know this stuff really well) a more Calvinist POV, that you can lose your salvation.

I think (though I'm not sure) that most Protestant churches teach that you can't lose your salvation once you're saved. t /FAC mode

It looks like it's a Calvinist thing. If everything is already predetermined, once you're saved, you can't be unsaved. Never mind all of the backsliding that goes on in the fundamentalist community.

Oh, right! I got the Calvinist stuff backwards.

It's been a long time since I've even thought about that stuff. At least I remembered "Calvinist."

Calvin has a lot to answer for. As does Hobbes.

I think (though I'm not sure) that most Protestant churches teach that you can't lose your salvation once you're saved.

I don't know that that's my experience in mainline Protestant churches, although that may be because the kind of churches I've gone to don't so much get into "being saved" at all. So I don't know.

The Elsie Dinsmore version of Protestantism also said that there was a limited window for being saved -- that, if you put it off for too long, then Jesus would just give up on you, and you wouldn't have another chance. I'd never heard that one anywhere else. (In the books, it led to a couple of misbehaving teenagers being bullied into saying "I accept Jesus into my heart" by their parents, who were worried about their eternal souls.)

It looks like it's a Calvinist thing. If everything is already predetermined, once you're saved, you can't be unsaved. Never mind all of the backsliding that goes on in the fundamentalist community.

Right, but if you go back to the origins, the way it largely played out was that there was a premium on public demonstrations of how devout and good you are, in order to demonstrate to the neighbors that you were one of the saved. Criminality, etc, would imply that you weren't among that august number. In theory. So no license to kill, but plenty of license to be self-righteous and judgy.

I've always wondered how people who make a big public show of their religious devotion interpret the early part of Matthew 6.

My background is also academic, but I was taught that Protestants believed that people when people were born, it was already predetermined whether they went to heaven or hell. Also, that everyone's soul was black, but some people (the saved people) had a cloak of grace that masked the black soul, and those were the saved people. However, it was impossible to know if you had been saved or not, so you should act like it.

Catholics believed that everyone was born part good and part bad, and your going to heaven or hell was determined by how you acted on earth.

Of course this course was taught by a Catholic....

interpret the early part of Matthew 6.

My favorite set of verses.

re: salvation, I believe the thinking was that salvation was a two-way street. Yes, Jesus saves you from the goodness of his heart, but you've got some responsibilities to continue to be worthy of it. Jesus won't stop loving you, but he's not going to ignore what you get up to while waving your Admit One Saved! certificate around. I may be getting some of this from purgatory theory, where you don't go to Hell but get to work off the sins you didn't manage to have cleansed before you died.

Making a fuss of how righteous you are and doing the elaborate public praying was always considered gauche in my church.